1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor and a circuit board allowing a multilayer ceramic capacitor to be mounted thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, electronic components using a ceramic material such as capacitors, inductors, piezoelectric elements, varistors, thermistors, and the like, include a ceramic main body made of a ceramic material, internal electrodes formed within the ceramic main body, and external electrodes installed on surfaces of the ceramic main body such that they are connected to the internal electrodes.
Among ceramic electronic components, multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) include a plurality of laminated dielectric layers, internal electrodes disposed to face each other with a dielectric layer interposed therebetween, and external electrodes electrically connected to the internal electrodes.
MLCCs are commonly used as components in mobile communications devices such as portable computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, and the like, due to inherent advantages thereof, such as compactness, guaranteed high capacitance, and ease of mountability.
Recently, as electronic products have been reduced in size and have had multifunctionality implemented therein, chip components have also become compact and highly functional, and consequently, multilayer ceramic capacitors which are small but have a high capacity are in demand.
Also, an MLCC disposed within a power circuit may be advantageously used as a bypass capacitor in a large scale integrated circuit (LSI), and in order for an MLCC to serve as a bypass capacitor therein, the MLCC is required to be able to effectively cancel high frequency noise. Such a requirement is increasing as electronic devices increasingly use high frequencies. An MLCC used as a bypass capacitor is electrically connected to a mounting pad of a circuit board through soldering and the mounting pad may be connected to a further external circuit through a wiring pattern or a conductive via.
An MLCC has equivalent series resistance (ESR) and equivalent series inductance (ESL) components, in addition to a capacitance component, and the ESR and ESL components may reduce a function of the bypass capacitor. In particular, ESL increases inductance of the capacitor at a low frequency to dampen high frequency noise canceling characteristics.